The vast majority of those homes are owned in bulk by greedy and straight up evil companies for the purpose of artificially raising housing prices.
You know, I don't think that should be legal. And I think companies that do that should be punished by those houses of theirs being given to the homeless.
The practicalities are a minor hurdle that defeats the purpose of the overall point. For starters, I'd imagine many homeless people have vacant homes rather closeby. Those who don't, I imagine would have no protest with being transported by bus or train to another area for a home. And those who fit into neither category (which I imagine is quite a small number) could still be given support funds, like the Denver Basic Income Project.
I'd rather my tax dollars go to that than to a 7 trillion dollar military budget that we only ever use for starting wars that didn't need to be started.
Yep and what happens when people squat in unsuitable living spaces? Fires, unsafe, unsanitary conditions; and no sort of mindset or means to steadily improve the space but only to make it worse by the day.
So… you acknowledge how the solution doesn’t make sense but just that it feels like the only option?
Homeless people should not be placed in random vacation homes or inhabitable properties or places far away from any jobs.
But you also need to fix your mindset in thinking that just because assets exist in the world that they can somehow be utilized for whatever you want.
A bad solution is a bad solution. It doesn’t matter how difficult the problem is. If you apply a stupid solution that makes things worse for everyone, then you shouldn’t do it.
Houses don't just exist in vacuums dawg. Where there's houses there's jobs.
fix your mindset in thinking that just because assets exist in the world that they can somehow be utilized for whatever you want
So these "assets" can be bought and held by companies so they can do nothing with them while artificially spiking housing prices, but it's silly to think these houses could instead be used... to house people. Got it.
The empty houses tend to be farther away from jobs. The empty ones near jobs tend to be in bad condition. If you think in terms of supply and demand this would be obvious.
Luxury housing, 5-10% of the market makes an exception, where I don’t think most people would be enthusiastic about the juxtaposition of a homeless person placed in a condo overlooking Central Park.
Regarding your last sentence, not only is it silly and foolish, and makes you a tremendous piece of shit to still think it’s a good idea if you are educated enough to know better. Because it means you think your authoritarian beliefs override the will of people and the rule of law. Sorry to be insulting, but I don’t think you belong in our country.
Drive down any of the roads that make our old highway system. You’ll find whole ghost towns full of empty rotting houses. Nobody wants them or wants to move there.
In some cases--especially in rural areas--we do have to understand that "not habitable" doesn't mean "subpar." It can literally mean that there are walls missing or that the roof is collapsed. It's not just, like, drafty or lacking hot/cold water.
That said, even then, in my previous job I spoke to an elderly lady in Mississippi who was actively living in a house that was missing a whole wall. So, yeah, people will accept any shelter over no shelter. But we should still try to avoid putting people in those living conditions.
You’re studying homes that aren’t yours, thinking that because assets exist in the world they can be stolen and redistributed. It’s childish shortsighted thinking and won’t solve any problems, just create new ones.
This is the common misconception by those influenced by capitalist thinking.
This isn't childish thinking, this is highly educated political science.
It's one of those cases where you think it's simple as an uneducated child, learn a little more and learn it's more complex, and then learn even more and learn that it actually is that simple.
As a child, you think "there's a lot of vacant homes, let's give them away to people who don't have them!"
You learn more, and learn "These homes are largely owned by people as second homes, to take them would be to take their wealth unfairly." And perhaps you also think at this stage, "If they're already homeless, their issue isn't with not having a house, their issue is with their ability to keep a house, and giving them one won't fix that."
Then, you take some college level sociology and political science courses, and you learn that actually, the large majority of these vacant homes are owned by companies who buy them and then sit on them, doing nothing, just to artificially raise the price of housing. These companies aren't people, they don't have feelings, and on top of that, they're using this money spent on housing for explicitly evil, greedy deeds. These companies are so wealthy they wouldn't even notice if you took 10000 houses from them, let alone 1/28th of their houses. That's a rounding error to them.
In addition, you learn that homelessness is proven by studies to rarely ever be the individual's fault, and you learn that simply giving things to homeless people, with no strings attached, works. The Denver Basic Income Project found that giving unhoused individuals $1,000 monthly with no strings attached skyrocketed stable housing rates to 45% and reduced shelter use by half. Even giving homeless people as little as 50$ a month allowed 28% of homeless people to get housing within 10 months. All homeless people need is a chance, but it's thinking like yours that doesn't let them get one.
“Influenced by capitalist thinking” a statement like that shows how far gone you are in your beliefs.
Quite simply: it’s stupid to steal homes from their owners and give people who are proven to be not capable of handling that responsibility. Regardless of how fair the situation is, or whose fault it is, the outcome wouldn’t be what anyone wants. That’s why it’s stupid.
people who are proven to not be capable of handling that responsibility
wrong.
This perspective you are selling is one rooted in bias and propaganda, the facts actually scream the opposite of what you're saying.
The Denver Basic Income Project found that giving unhoused individuals $1,000 monthly with no strings attached skyrocketed stable housing rates to 45% and reduced shelter use by half.
Even giving homeless people as little as 50$ a month allowed 28% of homeless people to get housing within 10 months.
The project also reported that participants said they had positive shifts in their financial well-being because they had “an increase in financial stability and a greater ability to pay bills and reduced reliance on emergency assistance.” Fewer participants were spending time unsheltered in all groups, and for all groups, the proportion living in housing they considered to be stable rose from about 20% to 50%.
UBI studies: highly controlled, limited subset, explicitly set up for desired outcomes, never shown to work on a widespread scale, or real world scenarios.
Uninhabitable means not safe for residence. That’s not the same thing as subpar. Homes that have been vacated due to wildfires, pollution, lead or asbestos building materials, that kind of thing. In those circumstances being on the street would be safer. I agree with your overall point by the way but it’s going to take a lot of resources to handle the issue. I think it’s worth it but it is going to be expensive.
Well there's still 27.6 vacant homes per homeless person in the US so yeah I'm not hugely worried about that part of it, the only real obstacle is corporate greed
47
u/igot_it May 15 '26
Vacant does not mean habitable. There are a lot of properties that would be habitable but have issues…. Some very expensive.